{"id":97911,"date":"2017-09-04T12:00:46","date_gmt":"2017-09-04T11:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=97911"},"modified":"2018-12-20T09:48:01","modified_gmt":"2018-12-20T09:48:01","slug":"a-prayer-for-houston-and","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/09\/a-prayer-for-houston-and\/","title":{"rendered":"A Prayer for Houston\u2026. And,"},"content":{"rendered":"

Please help the people in Houston, Lord.
\nAnd, while You\u2019re at it, in Palestine, too!
\nThough worlds apart, they are kindred,
\nas all suffering creatures are kindred.<\/p>\n

Is the child who is crying black or white?
\nDo I speak the same tongue as the mother,
\nholding her frightened child\u2014against the storms,
\nagainst the bombs; against cold and hunger?<\/p>\n

That old man and woman, alone in a home
\nin Seoul or Pyongyang could be my parents.
\nThose\u00a0siblings\u00a0stumbling across burned-out fields,
\nscratching at roots for food, are my siblings, too.<\/p>\n

In Alabama or Massachusetts–
\nthe same gnawing. In Rio\u2019s favelas,
\nin Tehran or Beijing: cancer carries away
\nthe beloved father, husband, son or daughter.<\/p>\n

The veterans of war remember friends
\nwhose lives bled out in foreign lands,
\nin nameless places where speakers came
\nto lay down wreathes on withered graves.<\/p>\n

Please help the people of Houston, Lord,
\nand of Chicago, Moscow, Damascus
\nand all those places I have heard evil
\ndwells\u2026and turned my eyes away\u2026in fear<\/p>\n

that I would see myself\u2014trembling, alone,
\nconfused, bitter, failing…shouting at ghosts,
\nfull of regrets, too easily misled,
\nbelieving lies dividing one jeweled world.
\n_____________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Dr. Gary Steven Corseri is a m<\/em>ember of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.<\/a> He<\/em> has published and posted articles, fiction and poems at hundreds of venues, including,<\/em> TMS (Transcend Media Service<\/a>)<\/a>, The New York Times, Village Voice, Redbook Magazine and<\/em> Counterpunch.\u00a0 He has published 2 novels and 2 collections of poetry, and his dramas have been produced on<\/em> PBS-Atlanta and elsewhere.\u00a0 He has performed his poems at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum and has taught in universities in the US and Japan, and in US public schools and prisons.\u00a0 Contact: Gary_Corseri@comcast.net<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Please help the people in Houston, Lord.
\nAnd, while You\u2019re at it, in Palestine, too!
\nThough worlds apart, they are kindred,
\nas all suffering creatures are kindred.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-format"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}